Kerner Commission Report

In 1968, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders released what was known as the Kerner Report, one of the most important and prophetic government documents of the 1960s. The product of a commission constructed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the report was often blunt, and its discerning language spelled out the perils and issues of blackness in America. The commission investigated the circumstances surrounding urban unrest in major cities across the United States.

To urge social and racial change, the commission tried to persuade legislators, politicians, and citizens that, “It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens—urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.” The Kerner Report continues to be an important document whose proposed solutions remain unfulfilled more than 40 years after its release.

The 1960s was a difficult time for the United States. Women agitated for the right to be treated as equals and to have access to the same opportunities as their male counterparts. Young people demonstrated against the Vietnam War, the defenders of the war, and those who sought to limit free speech and civil liberties. By the end of the decade, homosexuals also moved to put an end to the persecution inflicted upon them by society. Great men were assassinated as President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy each fell victim to an assassin's bullet. Arguably, however, nothing was as consequential as the movement that sought to rectify the wrongs brought about by America's original sin—slavery.